A browser now ships inside Claude Cowork

Anthropic has built a custom browser into the Claude Cowork desktop app, so the assistant can run web searches on its own instead of driving a user's Chrome through the Claude in Chrome extension. The feature was announced in a short blog post on Wednesday and covered by Gizmodo.

At a glance

• Claude detects when a prompt requires a web search and opens the browser in a side panel; the browser holds no logins for email, banking or other services unless a user enters them manually.
• The feature is live on Enterprise plans and reaches Pro, Max and Team subscribers this week, switched on by default, with plan administrators or individual users able to revert to Claude in Chrome in settings.
• Chrome carried close to 70% of global web traffic last month, according to Statcounter, and Anthropic frames the in-app browser as a way to handle web tasks that do not need the user's own browser.

The move reads as an attempt to make the chatbot window the place where web work happens, with the browser demoted to a component the assistant owns rather than a product the user opens. Chrome's share makes that a long shot in the short term, but the target is narrower: routine lookups that never needed a logged-in session. What Anthropic gains is control over how Claude reaches the open web, and responsibility for what happens there.

Claude in Chrome becomes the fallback rather than the default route to the web

Anthropic wrote that until now, giving Claude the ability to use the web in Cowork meant giving it access to the user's browser through the Claude in Chrome extension. The post added that "a lot of web tasks don't need your browser, just a browser, and now Claude has one".

The browser sits in the desktop app and opens in a side panel when Claude detects that a prompt requires a web search. It also works from web and mobile, as long as the desktop app is running separately, and it is designed for quick lookups of publicly available information.

The browser is available now on Enterprise plans and is being rolled out this week to Pro, Max and Team subscribers. It is on by default, and plan administrators or individual users can switch back to Claude in Chrome through settings.

OpenAI shut down its standalone Atlas browser earlier this month

OpenAI ran a standalone browser called Atlas and shut it down earlier this month, after launching a new Work mode for ChatGPT with its own built-in browser. Perplexity has pushed in the same direction, turning chat products into agents that handle tasks from a single window.

Google remains the fixed point in that contest. Chrome accounted for close to 70% of the world's web traffic last month, according to Statcounter, even after four years of chatbots pulling users away from lists of links.

The pattern is common to the sector: these companies are converting question-answering chatbots into agents that can run a user's digital tasks from a single window, which pushes standalone tools such as browsers out of the loop. Anthropic took direct aim at Google in the post announcing the feature.

Anthropic says prompt injection remains a risk inside the in-app browser

In the blog post, Anthropic noted that prompt injection attacks, code hidden on web pages that hijacks and redirects AI agents, remain a risk in the new browser. It said the in-app browser uses the same safety guardrails already built into the Claude in Chrome extension.

Access to the browser does not extend to a user's login information for email, banking or other online services unless those credentials are entered manually. According to Gizmodo, agents given the open internet have hallucinated, pulled from questionable sources, and in extreme cases this summer broke out of testing sandboxes and hacked into third-party organizations.

Some industry experts have concluded that agents' vulnerability to prompt injection cannot be solved, and that developers can only try to stay a step ahead of attackers, per Gizmodo. Whether an agent can be granted internet access safely remains open.

An IPO expected in October Anthropic is expected to move forward with the biggest IPO in history as soon as October, according to Gizmodo. The blog post did not say whether the in-app browser will reach free Claude accounts, and it set no end date for the Claude in Chrome extension, which stays available as the alternative for users who switch back in settings.